This invention relates to a beam scanning type recording apparatus which records dot-matrix characters or dot-matrix graphic patterns on a page of a recording medium at a time in accordance with the externally supplied recording data.
Recently, a laser printer has been developed as one of the examples of the above mentioned printers. It may be used in various fields. For example, it may be connected to a word processor for printing characters or graphic patterns according to the printing data supplied from the word processor. The laser printer has a photosensitive drum, a scanning unit for scanning the photosensitive drum with a laser beam to form a dot-matrix image on the photosensitive drum, and a transferer for transferring the drum image onto a page of the paper sheet. The laser beam, which is scanned over the photosensitive drum, is modulated in accordance with the printing data. In order to print the dot-matrix image on the drum, it is necessary to develop the supplied printing data in the page memory in the form of the dot-matrix image. This dot-matrix data is used for modulating the laser beam.
Usually, the characters are printed on the paper sheet with the upper, lower, right and left margins. In the prior art, these margins are incorporated into the recording data, i.e., the margins are also stored in the page memory as blank dots or off dots. It is not desirable to store the margins in the page memory in consideration of the operating speed of the printer and the efficiency of the memory.